And this Atrox is buying a stairway to heaven...........

[__________mrbiggel77]

Alas, this could be the end for the little Atrox we all know (and love) as Deakonoffire. I should be happy, I reached level 50 today. But instead of celebating my Foremanism I am thinking of quitting . The game has been getting boring for awhile now, it's just the same thing over and over. To get exp I've been at the Northwest cave for 10 lvls (about 2 weeks for me) and it is quite boring. Just the same killing over and over, except it takes longer to get to the next level. And then I decide at level 50 I will upgrade all of my gear since I really need to. I go into Omni-Trade with the 260k creds I've saved for god knows how long hoping that my new equipment will make the game more entertaining in some way. But then I realize that it took about 60k of those creds to buy my new nanos and it will take at least another 200k just for new implants. Well then, maybe I'll do some missions for items. I set the mission slider up a little and find a nice set of armor I'd like in Greater Omni-Forest. I head out in the excrutiatingly slow process of driving out to the edge of the zone and drive around a huge circle of rocks for 10 minutes til I find the way into my mission. Finally, back to missions. I've been team hunting the same mutants forever, this could be fun for a change. Then I get to the first MOB and it rocks me! It is only barely orange and by the time I have it's health down to 3/4, mine is down to 1/2 and I realize there is no way I can do this. So I'm stuck, broke, with terribly dated equipment, not having much fun, and my new title of Foreman. Well, maybe I will just head back to Omni-Trade, log off and try again later when my mind clears. So I find the exit in that stone circle and drive back to the city entrance. Which is when I find some huge spaceship crashed in the ground I have never seen before. Well this is exciting! Maybe it's a sign or something! A good omen! Then I realize when I try to talk to people on my chat window, nobody responds. Actually, I haven't seen any people or MOBs since leaving the mission. Odd. Well I know there are people in Omni-Entertainment so I find the entrance and head in. Then I keep going through the entrance. And I keep running and running til I find the edge of the map and look off into empty space. That can't be good. I log off and come back on another char, she seems fine. So I get back on the other guy, and It says zone unknown and he still can't talk to anyone nor can I zone into Omni-Entertainment. Bad omen. Overall this entire process takes about 3 hours. To me, Anarchy Online:
-Is not fun. Not enough variation. Just the same thing over and over for 200 levels then redo it with another guy.
-Less fun when you see a level 30 doctor fly in on a 5 million credit Yalmaha and start attacking the guys you could never take on and tank them better then you with her super twinked gear.
-Takes a huge chunk out of my time, which I already don't have much of (but I will have more in the summer so I was hoping to get good then but I can't)
-In addition it is costing me 12$ a month.
-Still has some serious bugs that are quite annoying.
Why should I bother to keep playing? What are this games redeeming qualities?
I think this Foreman may be done, and even if I tried to keep playing it wouldn't matter cause I'm stuck in some 4th dimension of the internet all alone in the zone *Unknown*.
If you have read all this thanks for sticking with me and if you enjoy the game, which I did for a little while, whatever floats you boat. Just wanted to tell you my piece. Know what? There is a game called City of Heroes coming out this summer that lets you create a superhero! I saw Spiderman last night and THAT looked fun! Maybe that is more along my lines.............

[___________PoPRawkZz]

Its true, hunting in the wild for too long will gimp you severely. The fact is there isnt enough money to be earned hunting in the wilds and leveling up actually gimps your character because you become weaker pound for pound against equivalent level mobs.

This is a bad system, I dunno WTF FunCom was thinking when designing outdoor areas, they should increase loot 6-8 folds out in the wild... credits wise and other. Think about it, you are getting 1/6th the loot fighting in groups and gaining XP at an extremely high rate. This combined with people basing nano and armor sales at half the EXTREMELY unrealistic price of armor in shops and you get for an underequipped very poor character if you decide to team up in anything besides missions.

As for your character stuck in an unknown zone, have a GM translocate your character. /petition with a different character.

Take a deep breath, and when you get back in the game give my character a tell, my name is SickWitIt, I am a level 49 doc and I will get you better equipped. Teaming with me will be a blast I promise.

As for the state of the game, FunCom really needs to reevaluate things I have two proposed solutions for them.

Solution 1: Increase loot on outdoor mobs, increase adequate hunting areas, and drop store prices about 10%.

Solution 2: Decrease the amount of XP earned levels 1-60 so cash isnt such a problem, increase nano formulas found in missions, allow for higher level items to be found in missions to make soloing for equipment viable. Currently at the level you can solo missions even severely over equipped nothing you find in missions is really useful. Team missions are only JUST viable.

There are more solutions, these seem to be the only implementable ones brough to my attention.

[_______________Rolex]

Hi,

I think, I know what the problem with your char. You leveled too fast, not too slow. And you did too few missions with carefully selected mission rewards.
I've played for a few months now. My first character (a Fixer) didnt make it much farther (By then he was so gimped he couldn't even do easy missions), but my second one is now 22 and doing great great great.
The thing I discovered is, that if you level too fast, you become 'gimped', that is seriously underequipped for the missions, that will yield usable items for your next levels.
With my new char, I stayed low level by getting killed just before leveling and thus loosing all my XP for that level!!! (Is that an exploit? I don't think so, but is hardly roleplying either). That way, I could do many more missions at the same level and get more neat stuff.
Only when I was maxed out in gear and money do I level and start the process anew.

I kind of enjoy it, because I have to kill reds and thats much more fun and challenging even tho it means that I have to let some gimp kill me every now and again to avoid leveling.

Rock on,
Kickas on RubiKa1

[___________PoPRawkZz]

That is exactly what I do... if I ever find myself leveling too fast, I take a breather and do missions for money, equipment, and kill myself before I level. IT SUCKS. Seriously, and everyone is out leveling me, but when I do finally start leveling in groups again, people love me for it, because I am equipped to handle our situations and I usually bring a lot to the group in terms of equipment for teammates who are under equipped, and I raise the survivability of the entire group.

Good to see I am not the only suicidal person in this game... now when I lose 88k xp in a boss room all I can do is *shrug* and say, oh well, at least I am more powerful now, hell its even better than leveling up in some respects.

AO is the first game that I've played that leveling up only decreases your overall power. In AO you depend on equipment, equipment gets old and underpowered quickly, so grouping is actually counterproductive to your character development.

[Veraliar]

Yeah.. umm you people are sort of wasting your time by /terminating.
If anything you can always do misisons on the easiest setting.
So for example I'm doing quality 55ish missions at lvl 41.
If lets say I go group hunting right now and make lvl 50 and if I still use the same equip that I used at 41, I'll just do quality 55 missions again - slide my bar lower. What's the point of /terminating? At least by 50 I'll have higher skills so I can actually equip better armor and stuff than I could at 41, all I need to do is run a few missions to make the money.

Do missions from Avalon if you're a clanner, they give good returns. I make a nice 30-50k a run now after I kill everything.
And I'm an MP which are one of the classes that cost a ton - I use no outside buffs but my guy is sporting a ql 60 attack pet and a ql 57 heal pet, both of which I had since lvl 37. Getting ready to upgrade to ql 70 pet and a better nuke, just need 170k =) a few missions and I should be there.

[Mysticknight]

the problem is NOT that he leveled to fast.
Its the fact that team loot on outdoor mobs sux
and mob loot outdoors for soloing isnt much better
its one of the reasons I solo outdoor mobs to get 100% of the loot and cash.
my atrox enforcer is lvl 70 and badly needs new implants and armor.

the alice in wonderland zone your in has been a problem for a long time.
solution run back to the omni forest zone
or petition to have you char sent back to civilization

[___________PoPRawkZz]

the problem is NOT that he leveled to fast.
Its the fact that team loot on outdoor mobs sux

Hey thanks for reiterating what I just said.

its one of the reasons I solo outdoor mobs to get 100% of the loot and cash.
my atrox enforcer is lvl 70 and badly needs new implants and armor.

If you knew loot sucked why did you keep doing it? Maybe you wouldnt need implants and armor so badly.

the alice in wonderland zone your in has been a problem for a long time.
solution run back to the omni forest zone
or petition to have you char sent back to civilization

hmmm, did you even READ my first reply to this thread? Coulda saved yourself a lot of typing. I already gave him a solution.

As for Veraliar:

If lets say I go group hunting right now and make lvl 50 and if I still use the same equip that I used at 41, I'll just do quality 55 missions again - slide my bar lower. What's the point of /terminating? At least by 50 I'll have higher skills so I can actually equip better armor and stuff than I could at 41, all I need to do is run a few missions to make the money.

Isnt running missions the exact same as /terminating? The difference I see is that I will constantly be getting loot and rewards above my level, whereas you will just be getting credits well below your level for each mission. See once you get ahead in the equipment race you never really get that far behind again, whereas you are always trying to play catchup, I am always playing powerup.

I only have to die every once in a while now that I am ahead. Besides whats the rush to level? Once you get into the 100+ its all missioning anyways. Enjoy your low levels while you can, you'll have plenty of time to sit around and camp spawns and make twinks later.

[_______________Rolex]

Originally posted by Veraliar
Yeah.. umm you people are sort of wasting your time by /terminating.

I don't see myself wasting time. My char is lvl 22 and played about 20 hours.... By the time I decide to level-up a bit, I do 1500XP/MOB at this level, so it takes maybe 1 hour to level 3-4 times (By takiong on 2-3 close-by missions) and then a few hours doing item-missions again.
Besides, the other approach left me with a char that had a pretty hard time doing even the easy missions. He was just so disastrously under-equipped.

If anything you can always do misisons on the easiest setting.

But that is soo boring! Having to do missions for money and then go vendor-booth-camping for hours. Yawn!
Nah, staying ahead of the curve and doing item-missions is more my style.

/Kickas

[Mysticknight]

Originally posted by PoPRawkZz




hmmm, did you even READ my first reply to this thread? Coulda saved yourself a lot of typing. I already gave him a solution.

yep i read your post but it was so freaking long your msg didnt stay in my head

kiss keep it simple stupid

[__________mrbiggel77]

alright, so basically my character is gimped and i could either beg for new stuff or do low lvl missions and kill myself when im about to lvl to start the painfully slow process of rebuilding my wealth and character. I agree with poprawkzz in that this game is way to dependent on equipment. in any good rpg a top lvl char should be able to beat a much lower lvl guy easily even if the high lvl guy is naked and the low lvl is twinked (good ol days in d2, bringing down my werewolf naked and dueling lvl 20s who claim hwo amazing they r ). yea i think for awhile im just gonna take it easy, this game needs some serious balancing. people shouldnt have to either twink or kill themselves to make a viable character. if they want people to hunt then make the loot better and if they want people to do a mix of missions/hunting (i think you should be able to go All hunt, All missions or a mix if you want) then you need some balance changes also. one last thing, when they make overequipping more then 20% penalized, trust me people are going to quit in droves. I regularily see a lvl 50 guy with ql150 weapons (even my gimp has ql 80 weapons). when everyone has to start using weapons around ql60-70 at char lvl 50 think of how much more painfully slow killing will be, and with such painfully bad loot............... this game is going downhill. i left d2 because the economy was screwed and once you hav 5 lvl90 guys it wasnt fun nemore, well this game seems to be going the way of every other rpg ive seen, just much earlier

[Whiterrabbit]

i hate to say this mrbiggle, but im afraid that it is possible to build a good character without twinking, OEing or terminating, there will be dry spots, but once you get over a certain point, you never need worry about money again.
people wont quit in droves over the oe patch, most people are behind it, and i think that the only people who will quit are those who are used to being uber and killing true newbies in a few shots.

ive one suggestion for you, mission blitzing.

set your mission slider to 90%, your agg-def bar to 0%, buff up and run through the mission without killing a single mob, look for the mission object, grab it.
easy money. takes a lot of practise and skill to do properly tho.

[PezPower]

There's always the option of finding an Org you like and joining it. It's a good way to get hand-me-downs from higher levels and provides a different social setting, which may help if you're sick of the whole hunt/mission and nothing else syndrome.

[________________Miir]

when they make overequipping more then 20% penalized, trust me people are going to quit in droves.

Thats hillarious.
The only people who will be quitting in droves are the uberequipping, arena-deuling, twinked out the yahoo, k3wL d00dZ.

And frankly, most people probably couldn't care less.
Anyway, once you hit 100-120, overequipping is not that big of an issue. Tell me, mrbiggel77, are most of the people you know playing AO under level 50?

[___________PoPRawkZz]

Hey MrBiggel I am going to be in game today, right after dinner (in about an hour) I am setting up my computers again and logging into AO after being away all weekend. So if yer on, you should send me a message so I can get you reequipped and kicking ass.

I may need a few minutes to get buffed back into my armor, I have everything taken off so I could go to a party at reets retreat with all my armor and weapons.

-edit-

My in game name is SickWitit in case I hadnt posted it before.

[__________mrbiggel77]

yea my comment about quitting in droves may have been influenced by my frustration with the game (ok it definitely was) and i know that at lvls 120 or so you have the necessary skills anyway so it doesnt matter.

and poprawkzz i very much appreciate your offer, id love to accept some pity and have some fun, when i get on again ill give u a tell, but on weekdays i usually dont get home till aorund 7 because of school and sports and all but ill def /tell u when i get a chance, thx

[Ashuras]

Hmm.. u got it all wrong.

If u want to make money fast, u are NOT supposed to do > 50% difficulty missions! Those are meant for XP!

U want money ? Set to max bad, max money. Difficulty 50% or less. The idea is to clear the mission FAST, and do a few of them. So u'll find that u have quite a bit of cash

The other thing about doing < 50% missions is, bullying green mobs means u'll use less treatment kits/recharger --> save credits !

[___________Fellowman]

Hi there

As posted in a previous reply, my advice would be to join a good guild. Many guild mates will be more than happy to give you their old/unwanted stuff.
As for money, get some missions, then form a team (from your new guild preferably). As you are the one with the missions you will get the monetary reward.
I agree that Funcom seriously needs to look at the outdoor spawns. They seem to like grouping a lot of lower level mobs with some really high level mobs thus rendering the location pointless. Coupled with the fact that there is no money to be made in outdoor hunting it's no wonder that people are doing missions all the time.
Funcom sort your lives out. MrBiggel sounds like a sensible guy that just wants to play your game, but he, like many others are seeing through the surface gloss to the shallow game that lies beneath.